Whether the Iraqi police force is ready or not, our combat troops will be home for Labor Day. Whether the country is stable or not, the war will end on schedule. A special investigative report.

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He wakes up at five in the morning and washes away his deep-sea dreams, the hot water spilling off his balding crown, running down his goatee and his bulky paunch. Then he gets into his sand-colored cargos and shirt, puts on his gear, checks his M4, grabs his battered laptop loaded with PowerPoint presentations — "Evidence Scene Protection," "Counter-IED Training," "Riot Control" — and climbs into a Humvee or MRAP to go to the next police station or training outpost. When he arrives, he greets the Iraqi policemen. As-salamu alaykum, he says. Wa alaykum as-salam, they reply. Peace be upon you. Peace be upon you, as well. The right hand touches the left side of the body armor, where the heart is hiding. Peace be upon you. Never has a war been fought with so much kindness.

"I dreamed I was scuba diving last night," Bill Connelly says over the intercom of the MRAP, a twenty-ton, six-wheel mine-resistant vehicle that looks like a submarine on wheels. It's the same conversation every day. Always diving.

"Yeah, I've been thinking about it a lot," Will Martin's voice comes in crackling. "As soon as I get out of this job, I'll get my license for master scuba-diver trainer and will open my own school. Somewhere in Costa Rica or Honduras."

Will Martin is Connelly's thinner twin: a goatee, a smaller paunch. Both of them worked as cops and are employees of DynCorp. War Pigs, they call themselves. Standing side by side, they vaguely resemble Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Except that Martin is quieter, more aloof. He has been in Iraq since almost the beginning of the war. The pupil of his left eye spills into the blue iris, like a broken egg yolk. He used to be roommates with Connelly in Kosovo, where they trained that country's fledgling police force. Now they're training this country's, at least for a few more months. Then their students will have to fend for themselves.

The armored convoy lurches forward, pushing through the gates of Camp Liberty, the sprawling U. S. base on the western outskirts of Baghdad, past Ugandan contractors with loaded Kalashnikovs and boonie hats slung low over their eyes. There are two beat-up Iraqi police trucks in the lead. Anytime Connelly* and Martin* or any MPs go beyond the wire, Iraqi escorts come along.

Outside, drab brown tenements and mud huts rise out of smoldering mounds of trash. A few cows graze in the refuse. In the distance, the four smokestacks of the local power plant shoot up like hypodermic needles, injecting the sky with their black smack. Only the palms, their fronds frozen in silent explosions, and Martin's stories — about diving, about binge drinking, about prostitutes in Thailand — add a bit of color.

"I think I'll buy a house here. It'll cost me cheap," Martin says.

"You've got livestock as well," says Connelly.

There are four U. S. armored vehicles in the convoy holding twenty-four men: four noncommissioned officers from the 49th MP Brigade, which is overseeing much of the police training in Iraq; sixteen personal-security details from the 229th MP Company charged with protecting them; two linguists; and Bill Connelly and Will Martin, who will lead the training.

The Gatorade and water in the cooler next to Connelly shake as the convoy starts and stops. Every so often it comes across an Iraqi police vehicle parked by the roadside or broken down. Several cops are having a picnic on the bed of their truck; another is standing by his motorcycle fingering his prayer beads, looking contentedly around. There is no reason to worry. Everything will be fine. Inshallah, God willing.

"Are you kidding me? Right now?" asks Sergeant John Paras, the truck commander.

"Roger, sir."

"A doughnut?"

"Sorry. Cigarettes. He's buying cigarettes."

Silence. Then laughter. It's all good. At last the convoy snakes through a couple of concrete roadblocks and pulls into a parking lot of the Iraqi Patrol Police Headquarters, on the opposite side of the Tigris from the International Zone. To one side is the new American-built training center with an indoor firing range and a makeshift boxing ring. To the other are more than a hundred blown-up police cars stacked atop one another like piles of prehistoric bones. Next to the heaps of twisted metal and shattered glass, sitting on tattered scraps of cardboard in the parking lot, cross-legged and calm and potbellied like Buddhas, are the new Iraqi recruits.

As the crew members spill out of their vehicles, weapons on red, the students across the parking lot stare at an Iraqi instructor teaching them bomb-detection techniques. He clicks open a black briefcase and takes out a plastic hand grip with a swiveling antenna. With his arm relaxed at his side, he draws a deep breath, then slowly raises the device until the antenna is parallel to the ground. A small plastic bottle with C-4 has been placed a few feet away, and the antenna swivels on its own in the direction of the explosive.

The students, wearing tattered, mismatched uniforms, are wonder-struck. One by one they get up to give it a try. But most struggle to balance the antenna while walking, as if getting tested for alcohol. The antenna swings wildly left and right, detecting smiles and giggles instead.

The device, which can cost up to $60,000, is called ADE 651. A few months ago a Cambridge University scientist concluded that the plastic cards within are nothing more than simple antitheft tags. The detector doesn't work, the American military told the Iraqis. But the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior had already spent $85 million to outfit the entire police force, so they continue to use it.

One of the cops approaches Connelly and the MPs, who are standing across from the training. "It works," he says with a smile, "but a lot of the guys prefer teasing their girlfriends with it, produce a big bang."

Connelly looks for a brief second at the young Iraqis testing the bomb detector in front of the blown-up cars. He's been in Iraq two years now. His job is to assist and advise, check off a box, and move on to the next mission. Beyond that, he is to offer no opinions, no unsolicited advice. So he does the only thing he can: He walks away. Soon he'll be gone, and securing the country will be left to the disheveled, laughing Buddhas and their magic wands.

It used to be that every year a new MP unit would arrive and say that the grand strategy of the previous unit was wrong, and start anew, determined to get it right at last. Now the only grand strategy is to get the hell out. By the end of summer there will be less than fifty thousand Americans left in Iraq, mostly just advisors and support staff tasked with packing up. The president barely even mentions Iraq these days, and Americans back home, reeling from a recession that is taking too long to end, could be forgiven for believing the war in Iraq is already over. It's an afterthought, even as homemade bombs still ricochet on a regular basis, killing an average of seven Iraqis every day. This early spring morning, as Connelly prepares to begin his latest training course, a suicide bomber will blow himself up outside a government compound sixty-five miles to the west in Ramadi, killing at least thirteen people. The day before in Washington, D. C., Defense Secretary Robert Gates codified the strategy shift by officially renaming Operation Iraqi Freedom Operation New Dawn, "to recognize our evolving relationship with the government of Iraq." The day before that, in Baghdad, the Army announced that for the first time since 2003, there are fewer than a hundred thousand U. S. troops in Iraq. Bombs or no bombs, the war is ending on schedule.

For their course in unarmed self-defense, Connelly and Martin have brought the RedMan, a padded black training suit that's supposed to protect against high-intensity punches and kicks. The special helmet, with its heavy-duty visor, makes the wearer look like an antique deep-sea diver from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The Iraqis are elated.

"I need a volunteer here," Connelly says.

Why he was asked to lead this three-day course, Connelly doesn't ask. Like everything since the Americans signed the security agreement in 2008, the orders now come from the Iraqis themselves. A phone call is made to the 49th MP Brigade, which is heading up efforts of Iraqi police training at the local and provincial levels: We need help with crime-scene preservation, an Iraqi officer might say. Or the 49th might ask the Iraqis: Do you need escort training? If they say yes, one of the 249 Police Transition Teams is mobilized.

"So who wants to try on the RedMan?" Connelly repeats his question, waiting for the linguist to translate his words.

After a short dispute, Anmar Hemet, a twenty-something policeman with a buzzed haircut, gets the honor. His childlike face looks otherworldly behind the visor. Anmar moved to Baghdad from the city of Kut after Al Qaeda found out he was working for the police and shot him four times in the leg.

"What do you do if somebody grabs your weapon in the holster?" Connelly asks. "The first thing that you want to do is trap his hands on top of the gun."

Anmar reaches out for the training toy gun in the holster of his friend Mohammed Naim.

Like all the policemen Connelly works with, these have already gone through a typically monthlong basic-training course taught by Iraqi instructors at one of the local academies. Fresh off the streets, most of them don't know much about anything. Shurtas, Iraqis call these low-ranking cops, and it is something almost insulting — once a shurta, always a shurta. Connelly's job is to teach them a few more basic techniques: how to investigate, how to subdue suspects on the ground. Everyone in this group is a shurta, except for Sa'don Mutlek, the senior trainer at the Patrol Police Headquarters.

"Let me show you something," Sa'don says when the RedMan exercise is over. He orders Anmar to pick up one of the toy guns and hold him at gunpoint. Anmar obeys. Then, with a sudden lightning-fast motion of his palm, Sa'don pushes the gun aside and throws Anmar to the ground, wrenching the boy's arm so hard that at first it seems he has broken it.

Sa'don looks smugly around. Nice, no?

In his forties, with silvery hair and a black mustache accentuated by a clean-shaven cleft chin, Sa'don resembles a man who could be either a war hero or a war criminal, depending. Although his rank is commissioner, he wears a U. S. Army sergeant major patch, and everybody addresses him as "Sergeant Major." He's short and fit, with the build of an anvil, a sharp contrast with other Iraqi cops, who are either too chubby or too gaunt for the job. He's obsessed with muay Thai boxing and all sorts of martial arts that involve breaking large stacks of bricks in front of large audiences. He can draw his gun in less than a second and hit a soda can sixty feet away, then clear the shell from the chamber and catch it midair. Before the American invasion, he worked as security detail for government VIPs.

"Do it again," a voice yells from the sidelines. People are standing in a circle now, forming a small arena, like spectators at a street fight. The Americans have all taken out their fancy video cameras; the Iraqis shoot with their cell phones.

Beat up but still obedient, Anmar picks up the toy gun again and points it at Sa'don. In the next second he's lying down on the ground, his face contorted. Satisfied with his performance, Sa'don takes out a pack of Gitanes from the side pocket of his fatigues and lights up a cigarette.

Sa'don is good, a cop to the bone. What very few people know is that a few years ago U. S. troops shot dead his nine-year-old son while he was playing with a toy gun out in the street. Afterward they wanted to compensate him, but Sa'don refused. So many Iraqis had died in this war that he wasn't sure whom to blame anymore. Plus, he really liked the Americans, despite the tragedy he had suffered. He thought of them as efficient and professional, not unlike himself. If he could choose, he would have liked Iraq to become the fifty-first state. "Americans really know their stuff," he says. "If they were left alone, they could really build up this place."

He takes a deep puff from his cigarette. From where Sa'don stands, he can see the piles of blown-up cars that mark the entrance to the police station. He's told his Iraqi bosses many times that the blown-up cars are bad for morale, that they should be moved. But nobody listens. Instead, they say they're needed for spare parts. But everyone — Iraqi and American — knows that's half the truth. They keep stacking the disabled cars here so they won't be taken off the books and the Ministry of the Interior will keep paying for their gas and maintenance. It's just an elaborate scheme, like everything else in this country. Real vehicles blown up because of fake bomb detectors, blown-up vehicles faked as real.

The course continues for three days. While Connelly instructs, the MPs from the 49th walk around the police station for meetings with the commanders. Over sweetened tea, they play diplomat and desperately try to secure the goodwill and allegiance of their Iraqi counterparts. "We need video cameras for our crime-scene investigations," the public-affairs officer of the Patrol Police Headquarters says. "We'll work on getting you video cameras," replies the public-affairs officer of the 49th MP Brigade. The important thing is to keep the Iraqis happy for a few more months, as the Americans are retreating on tiptoe toward the exit. The important thing right now is not to step on any dry branches.

On the final day, boxes of live ammunition are hauled in from the armored vehicles — 5.56mm, 7.62mm. The steel boxes are gray, like military coffins. Inside, the sharp tracer heads are painted red and green.

"Who wants to shoot?" Connelly asks. This isn't a training exercise, more a morale builder, a show of goodwill before the students receive their certificates for completing the course.

All the Iraqi hands go up.

"Good," Connelly says. "Now line up."

"Can I shoot?" Mohammed asks bashfully. He's the runt of the group, with gentle brown eyes and a clean-shaven face that hardly needs shaving.

"Sure you can," says Major Dillon Haynes, and hands him his M4. "Go ahead."

One by one the Iraqi trainees line up and take turns, crouching, looking through the scopes. Connelly and Martin, as well as the MPs, stand behind, giving instructions. Lower your aim. Careful with the recoil.

Sa'don empties his magazine in a single burst, then runs back to the ammo box to reload. Mohammed aims his borrowed M4 at the targets in the distance and then pulls the trigger with a bit more confidence than usual. Again. Again. Again.

Soon the American troops from the security detail join in, the barrels of their rifles, silent since their arrival in Iraq, smoking. Soon hands are grabbing cartridges. The gravel tinkles with the sound of falling shells and the afternoon light turns ghostly with dust. More people shooting. Men stream from the headquarters building a few hundred yards away — first a trickle, then a dozen, then two dozen, office workers, men in plain clothes.

It takes a while for the MPs to react. At first Sergeant First Class Arne Eastlund holds back his anger. But as the pandemonium unfolds, as the men wearing suits and sweaters and sandals, smiling maniacally and laughing, continue to pile bullet after bullet into their hands, he breaks.

"We come here to shoot some lead," he says. "We always bring our own ammo. It's for my soldiers and your soldiers to shoot. But when every dipshit from a ten-mile radius comes here to shoot, that really bothers me."

Sa'don stares down at the ground, his smile gone. He lights up a Gitane and starts puffing away. He does not have the authority to tell the administrative staff to back off. He would get fired. The Americans don't understand that. They don't understand that to survive in Iraq, you need to be resigned. To survive, you can't fight the current — you have to let it take you downstream.

They come from all around Baghdad. Former cabdrivers. Former car mechanics. Former high school teachers. Former bakers. A few ex-soldiers. Every morning sixty of them show up at the main gate of Camp Liberty, ready for another day of training at the Criminal Justice Center, an American-run police academy tucked away in a shady grove of date palms and eucalypti, stone paths and artificial canals. They are all Baghdad shurtas, hailing from the various police services: Patrol Police, local police, highway police. Some of them wear their blue police uniforms, but most come to training dressed casually — they don't want anybody out in the city to know they are cops. The sectarian militias disappeared a few years ago, but everyone knows they simply joined the Ministry of the Interior.

"I'm tired of PowerPoint presentations," Safaa Abdalha says, eating a banana during lunch hour. "Every morning is the same thing. Stuck at this tablet-arm desk. My feet are starting to swell." Safaa is twenty-four, a soccer player and a fan of Tupac. He wears a blue track jacket, well-pressed pants, and pointy shoes. He's clean-shaven, with bangs parted in the middle and swirled with gel like the horns of a bighorn sheep. He didn't have enough money to marry his girlfriend, so he joined the police.

"Yes, the PowerPoint this morning was boring, but I liked that slide of the blond girl attacking a riot policeman. Did you see that?" Mohammed Yassin, another trainee, says as he takes out cold pita bread from a plastic shopping bag. In his early forties, balding, with a black worn-out jacket and a big paunch, Mohammed looks like an aging dockworker. He lived in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia for thirteen years but decided to return triumphantly to Iraq after the fall of Saddam. Instead, he was caught in the sectarian wars, his sister murdered. He ended up squatting in Baghdad with his wife and two daughters — a refugee in his own country.

Safaa has been a cop for four years now, and Mohammed for only two, but much of the training at the CJC is new to them. The three-week basic course includes everything from Iraqi law and first aid to counter-IED and 9mm-pistol training. But like most other trainees here, Safaa and Mohammed don't really care. What's the point of being a good cop when being a good cop is precisely what can get you killed in Iraq? It's not that they don't know right from wrong. But better to stay behind, have a longer life.

"There are certain soldiers that are not being leaders," he says, raising his voice. "They need to be leaders. They should not be standing around talking. If I tell you to be here at 12:40, that means you need to be here at 12:35. You understand?"

The interpreter doesn't bother to translate.

"They're damn lazy." He turns around. "This is what is wrong with this country. They're here for three weeks because they don't want to be patrolling."

Fifteen minutes later, law and order is finally restored. Safaa and Mohammed, together with a few others, get in line. Because the class is too large, Morgan takes some of his students for "cell extraction" training in the old detention facilities, and leaves the rest for shield-and-baton training in the yard with his partners from the 217th MP Company.

Private First Class John-Warren Spears, with his eyes hidden behind shades and a thick southern drawl obscured even more by his constant gum-chewing, is an enigma. He likes to talk about fancy weapons, like the katana, and how good he is at handling them. Now, twirling the baton, he surveys the Iraqi trainees behind their transparent shields, smiling at him, waiting for instructions.

Specialist Cale Ransom, a gentle and courteous guy, is starting to get nervous. "Spears, do you know how to do this shield training?"

"Honestly, I've never been shield training until today."

"I only had a couple of days."

"I was never trained to shield. I'll be honest."

This is Spears's first time in Iraq, and he hates it. He thought he was coming here to get into firefights with some hajis, to get some, but instead he got stuck teaching the hajis how to hold a shield and wield a baton — stuff he himself knows little about. Last Christmas he decorated his room with a pennant that reads PRAY FOR WAR, yet his prayers haven't been answered.

Fuck!

The Iraqi cops look puzzled.

"Okay, I'll do it, I'll do it," Staff Sergeant Kenneth Hollis, the representative supervisor, steps in. He spits out a wad of tobacco juice, takes a baton, and begins to walk up and down. "Let's pretend I'm a bad guy and you need to push me out of the crowd," he tells the trainees hiding behind their transparent riot shields. "I want you to form a straight line, put the shields together, and advance towards me and push me back."

Hollis, a stiff and hard-faced Alabaman in his forties, seems to know how to handle his trainees. This is his third tour, and by now he understands that the biggest problem is the lack of teamwork among the Iraqis. Slowly, he tries to tell them how to stand together, how to interlock shields.

The Iraqis all huddle together, clinking merrily their riot shields like champagne flutes.

"I don't use a shield," Spears mutters quietly to himself on the sidelines. "I'll just shoot you, I'll just shoot you," he repeats, chewing angrily. "Whenever you use riot shields at home, it's a bad day. It's mainly just the lowest people who hold the shields while we shoot tear gas at everyone else."

At that moment the trainees from a SWAT class storm into the yard with their brownish toy M4s, shouting. There are about ten or so of them, almost a small squad. In their jeans and shiny blue jackets, they look like real insurgents. Their faces express joy, a peculiar sort of ecstasy. Allahu Akbar!God is great! Their day-worker passes twirl in the wind as they run. DynCorp contractors and MPs encourage them in the back, like generals. Go! Go! Go! In a few seconds they fill up the yard and clear every corner, making sure that their imaginary enemy is not hiding anywhere. Clear! Clear! Clear!

Hollis and Spears and Ransom try to ignore them at first. Now raise the shields over your heads. Now lower them down. Safaa and the other trainees, looking out from behind the transparent shields, as if underwater, try to keep straight faces. But the effort is useless. Soon they too are out of control. The two armies have finally met on the battlefield.

Posters are everywhere: pasted on gray blast walls, on trees, hanging from electric poles, from barbed wire. With his fist raised, amid his own posters, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki greets his supporters at a rally. "We worked hard to build the state," he bellows into the microphone. "We will not lose it to the whims and caprices of those who want to seize power."

A few miles away Brigadier General Donald Currier has taken a seat on his office couch — a guest on his own talk show. The topic today is whether the Iraqi police are prepared to take over once the Americans break camp. His answer is political, equivocal: Maybe. "Iraqi Police's future success will be dependent on the selflessness of the political leaders, not of the tactical leaders," he says. "The tactical leaders are sound. The question is whether they'll get the direction that they need from the political leaders. That's an open question in my mind."

Currier's office unit stands adrift in a barren moonscape of dirt and gravel on the northern side of Camp Liberty, a stone's throw away from the lush surroundings of the CJC. As head of the 49th Military Police Brigade, based in California, Currier is the commander of more than seven thousand troops charged with Iraqi police training and detainee operations as well as local Police Transition Teams throughout the country, from the Kurdish north to the Shiite south.

Years ago, he was a regular shurta in Sacramento, a point of pride. He is fiercely eloquent, his voice always measured and modulated. His short-cropped grizzled hair and grizzled mustache are almost of a piece with his grizzled, pixelated fatigues. In keeping with his civilian job as California's chief deputy inspector general, he does not shrink from examining frankly past mistakes, American and Iraqi. He likes to tell stories to illustrate his points.

"We did terribly wasteful things," Currier says, referring to his first tour as deputy commander in 2005 and 2006, when the Iraqi police were in such poor shape, so undisciplined, that they would buy new Glocks and the next day the Glocks would end up on the black market. Cops would desert and join militias or get killed in scores. Meanwhile, private contractors were sitting around in provincial Iraqi towns, sipping tea and siphoning off millions of dollars for this or that fiction. "One of the contributing causes for that was that we had a lot of money but not a whole lot of oversight."

Security varies from region to region, but Iraq is a safer country today than what it used to be just two years ago. "The police are so much better than before," he says, leaning back comfortably. "Before we just talked of terrorism and how to get rid of the really bad guys. Now we have some space for civilian law enforcement. The best thing is the Iraqis' acknowledgment of their responsibilities."

But Currier also knows that he is trying to build a police force on already flawed foundations. "Our fundamental mistake was that we had a window of opportunity to mold this society, and we punted it," Currier says with a level voice, just stating the simple facts. "I understand there are questions of national sovereignty involved, but the Iraqis were simply not ready to take over. We said to them, 'It's your problem, you deal with it.' So now the only practical solution is to follow the Iraqi model."

He explains that in the Iraqi model, the police are seen by Iraqi politicians as a lever of power rather than a tool of public safety. It's a culture that breeds corruption from the top down. The Americans could train a hundred thousand more cops, a million before they leave for good, yet numbers would remain meaningless if national and local leaders continue to use the police as their personal armies to protect and consolidate power. The Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defense are near enemies, defending different political interests and fighting over control of Iraq's internal security. The new prime minister — the way he shapes the government once the U. S. withdraws — will determine whether the police forces Currier leaves behind will succeed or fail.

Two weeks later, the seventh of March, Election Day. The Iraqi Army drives down the streets in armored personnel carriers, turret gunners nervously scanning the surroundings with .50-caliber machine guns. A vehicle curfew for civilians has been imposed and Baghdad looks nightmarishly empty. The poster faces of politicians outnumber the faces of real people. In 2005, Currier and his MPs jointly led security with the Iraqi police. This time the Iraqi police are supposed to stand alone, with the 49th troops in reserve.

Currier climbs into an MRAP command vehicle and heads for Baghdad's Provincial Directorate of Police, the center of operations, where he observes the police coordination firsthand. His Blue Force Tracker computer shows a map of Baghdad: Friendlies are marked in blue, significant attacks marked in red. Beginning at eight in the morning, every five minutes or so there is an explosion in the distance. By noon, however, the situation calms down. Most of the bombs have been small, explosives packed in water bottles to produce extra noise and scare voters away. And as the day progresses, the booms become more and more sporadic, eventually trickling into silence. It feels as if a great thunderstorm has passed and the sky is clear once again. In spite of the dangers, voters came out in large numbers: 62 percent of them cast ballots. And Currier did not have to send American troops into the city streets. No dry branches were broken.

Yet months later, the leadership of the Iraqi government remains unresolved. Nuri al-Maliki and his main opponent for prime minister, Ayad Allawi, came within a hair's breadth of each other, neither of them able to claim a clear majority. The one undeniable result is that within days of the disputed election, bombs begin ripping through cities on a regular basis. Nearly seven hundred people killed in two months.

In late May, Currier is on the phone in his office. It is midnight in Baghdad. The day before, a pickup truck driven by a suicide bomber rammed into a commercial strip in Diyala province. The roof of a cafÇ collapsed, shops caught fire, and some of the people trapped inside burned alive. Rumors circulated that the cops at a checkpoint had been bribed.

"The security plan is a total failure. [The police] do not protect the citizens at all," Sadiq al-Husseini, the deputy chairman of the Diyala provincial council, told a journalist.

Currier remains stoic. "The capability of the police has not changed," he says. "They continue to improve, but it has been difficult for them operationally, because the longer the government goes without having been seated, the more difficult it is for them to respond to the proper political authorities." His voice is less assertive than it was a few months before. He's talking with greater deliberation than usual. "It's a slow road when you're trying to put a country together," he continues. "I think we have a lot to be encouraged about. But we're not overly optimistic. The Iraqis could fail..."

He pauses, as if visualizing the words, then snaps back. "We set them up for success. We gave them the tools they need to succeed, and they're going in the right direction, but it's really time for us to leave. I hope and I believe that the Iraqis are going to make it."

Another pause.

"But they might not," he says. "There's always that chance. But we'll always know that we did what we could for them."

Behind Currier, on this late May night, flags flank his desk. Next to Old Glory stands the flag of the California Republic. It depicts a California grizzly bear walking westward. In a few months, the flags will be carefully rolled up and shipped back home with everything else.

The al-Resala police station, in the dangerous Abu Ghraib district just west of Baghdad, on the highway to Fallujah, is a drab brownish three-story building surrounded by twelve-foot blast walls topped with concertina wire. With round guard towers at each corner, all of them painted baby blue, it looks like the medieval fortress of a wacky king. A mud road leads to an ocean-blue metal gate with the Iraqi flag painted in the shape of a shield.

With a droopy face and a droopy voice, his bushy eyebrows nearly covering his eyes and his bushy mustache nearly covering his mouth, the chief of the police station, Major Faysah, seems like a man constantly on the verge of falling asleep under the weight of his own thoughts. He looks wearily at the American airmen from the 732nd Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron lounging on the couches across from him.

"So nobody has targeted you recently?" Technical Sergeant Rafael Melendez, the team leader, asks. He's robust and dashing, with a pencil mustache.

"So what are the biggest problems at your police station?" another person from the team ventures to ask after the major hangs up five minutes later.

"We have two kinds of IPs. The IPs who used to be police officers during the former regime: They are professional officers because they went through three years of training. And then we have the ones who joined after the fall of the former regime: They went through one month of training and that training was not good enough. That's why we're asking the coalition forces to help us."

Faysah speaks with great deliberation. He opens his mouth and closes it, and only then the words hit his audience, like the distant rumble of thunder after lightning.

"And has the coalition training been helpful?"

Finally, his answer arrives.

"Yes, it's been helpful. But, frankly, I want to tell you that most of the IPs who joined after the fall of Saddam are uneducated, they know nothing about Iraqi law, and they don't get the full benefit from the training because when our ministry decided to hire IPs, they focused on the quantity, not on the quality. The lack of education is the greatest problem."

Outside in the muddy yard, before leaving for a joint foot patrol, Major Faysah orders twelve cops to stand in formation while Senior Airman Jensen Caldwell reads out to them a lesson in professional ethics.

The Iraqi cops, dressed in an assortment of dark-blue fatigues and light-blue shirts, some wearing berets and others baseball caps with POLICE written out in English and Arabic, are standing at parade rest, hands interlocked behind their backs.

"Individual values. Values are the ideas and concepts that we hold important... Our daily decisions are guided by a set of values..."

Standing in front of them, in full gear, with his blue helmet light throwing a faint glow on an open white binder in his hands, Caldwell looks like a medieval monk studying the Scriptures by candlelight. His nose is a bit stuffy with a cold and his voice sounds nasal. He stumbles over some of the words in the darkness.

"Values are developed from internal and external sources. Internal: life experiences, self-study, and examination of individual sense of what is right and what is wrong..."

The interpreter is struggling to keep up. A few policemen start shifting their legs, and some of them can't suppress a yawn. An Iraqi pop song comes blaring in from somewhere in the formation. One of the cops reaches into his pocket and takes out his cell phone. Marhaba. Hello. Caldwell turns the page.

"The same people who enforce the law, the police service, must also obey the law and maintain the respect of the public..."

From far out in the distance, faintly, arrives the night call to prayer. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. God is great. God is great. God is great. God is great. Caldwell turns to the next page, raising his voice slightly until the lesson is over. The crescent moon has climbed up higher in the sky. The joint foot patrol can now begin.

Among fields of trash where feral dogs snarl at one another and fight to the death, next to pools of standing water fed by open sewage where frogs croak all night long, down rutted roads where the sticky brown mud is not exactly mud, the American troops and Iraqi cops march. Armed with their AKs, the Iraqis walk in front. Sergeant Melendez and his airmen, their weapons on red, looking at a green world through night-vision goggles, secure the rear guard. Everybody walks in silence.

It is past ten o'clock and there are few pedestrians around. Naked lightbulbs, like hangman's nooses, sway in front of this or that dreary adobe. A lone shop, housed inside something resembling an iron cage, is still open for business, but the men on the patrol are not customers. The owner's eyes shine with fear when he sees the cops approaching. He seems ready to lock himself up inside his cage.

A few houses down, a pair of headlights suddenly lights up on the road in front. A minivan revs its engine and starts driving straight for the cops. There is shouting as everybody dashes for cover. Then, just before the first shots are about to be fired, the driver halts and the Iraqi cops quickly take him out of his seat. "Who are you?" they ask, roughing him up. "What do you have in the van?"

The man is a local resident who didn't know about the foot patrol. The cops open the back of the van only to find it completely empty. "Sorry, I'm so sorry," the man says, visibly shaken.

After an hour, with boots covered in brown mud that is not exactly mud, everybody heads back for the al-Resala police station. The power there has gone out again, but Major Faysah orders his officers to stand once again in formation in the dark yard. They all look tired now, bored, steeling themselves for another lecture. Sergeant Melendez, dashing as usual, has only some brief remarks to make.

"I'd like to say you did an excellent job, and you should be proud of yourselves. Keep up the great work. And have a good night." He's the DJ at the end of a long party, when the music has just been turned off and the dancers must leave.

With a brisk step, the airmen begin walking toward the gate of the police station, the ocean-blue gate, in front of which two MRAPs and two Humvees are waiting to take them back to the military base, back to the lights of the chow hall, back to the light of the video games, and, soon, very soon, back to the lights of America.

The moon is already low on the western horizon and Orion, the Hunter, chases his prey through the night sky.

--Dimiter Kenarov traveled to Iraq on a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a nonprofit organization that supports international journalism on underreported topics.